Bubbles worked his usual shift at Aubuchon Ace Hardware in Vergennes on a sunny afternoon in late May, but he skipped the stations where he spends most of his time. He wasn’t near the rack of flower and vegetable seeds on a lawn chair. He wasn’t on the display of work pants near the front of the store, on a lawn mower seat or high on a ladder where his fellow employees were stocking shelves.
“He climbs up on the ladders and jumps,” said Lea Cassidy, one of Bubbles’ coworkers and his primary caretaker at the store. “He loves ladders.”
Instead, Bubbles took advantage of the nice weather and lounged in the grass near the outdoor garden display. Still, he was doing his job. He was delighting customers.
“Hello, sweet thing. I read about you,” said Charlotte Landon, an animal rescue volunteer who lives in Savannah, Ga., and had seen Bubbles on social media. While visiting her father in Middlebury, Landon stopped by the hardware store for some zinnia seeds and a huge pack of in-shell peanuts that her husband hand-feeds to chipmunks. “If a store has a cat or a dog,” she told a reporter, “I will shop there over one that doesn’t.”
While retailers of all kinds have resident animals — Bentley the golden retriever works at A Little Something, a clothing and gift shop in Shelburne; the Quirky Pet in Montpelier has a memorably dreadlocked Bergamasco sheepdog; and Bear Pond Books around the corner hosts a Russian desert tortoise named Veruca — hardware stores across Vermont have become unexpected feline habitats. We wondered: WTF is up with this purr-veyor pairing?
Bubbles is one of about 100 cats employed by the W.E. Aubuchon chain of 144 hardware stores across Vermont and 11 other states. Based in Westminster, Mass., the family-owned company brought in the domesticated species about 20 years ago, initially in a distribution center to hunt and deter mice drawn by the animal feed. The practice then spread to rural stores, primarily in Vermont and Maine, that carried a lot of feed for nearby farms.
“The cats really exploded in stores,” said Ben Aubuchon, the company’s marketing manager and great-grandson of its founder. He did not mean that the animals combusted.
Seven Days followed our curiosity about the cats to the stores where Bubbles and his fellow felines serve as Aubuchon ambassadors as much as mouse hunters. Almond and Joy occupy the Aubuchon Ace Hardware in Montpelier. Charlie works in Morrisville. Aggie helps at the cash register in Jeffersonville. Many of the cats have their own Instagram accounts. They have clawed their way into the hearts and social media feeds of customers, to the point that some stop to visit the cats even when they don’t need garden hoses and hammers.
The Vergennes store adopted Bubbles four years ago from the Homeward Bound humane society in Middlebury. All of Aubuchon’s cats come from local animal shelters and typically have waited longer for placement, for various reasons, than pets snapped up by families, Ben Aubuchon said.
“We’re not, like, going to Petco and buying cats,” he said. “We say we’re looking for a cat, and we’re really not picky about it.”
Bubbles is nonetheless alluring. He has fluffy black-and-tan fur, a lush tail, pale green eyes that close during a chin scratch, and a peach-colored nose. Beige tufts poke out of his pointed ears. He seems to know he’s handsome, exuding an air of aloofness as he struts around the premises and perches on piled bags of potting soil.
“He let me pet him,” Emily Silman said when she found Bubbles outside. A former Charlotte resident who now lives in Atlanta but has rental property in Vergennes, Silman recalled a previous store visit when she sat in an aisle and Bubbles crawled into her lap. “You kind of have to earn his attention,” she said.
In the first-ever Hardware Store Cat Calendar, released for 2026, Bubbles is Mr. October, stretched out like a supermodel in front of a display of pumpkins and a big pot of yellow mums. The more than $36,000 in calendar sales went to the Aubuchon Foundation, which matches the money each store raises through a “round-up” campaign. (The stores ask customers to round up their payments to the nearest dollar, giving the excess money to a charitable organization that the staff chooses — often an animal-related nonprofit.)
Customers demanded to know how Aubuchon selected its calendar models, Ben Aubuchon said. It came down to the highest-resolution photos that would reproduce best when enlarged to calendar size. The marketing manager is already planning the 2027 calendar and expects the competition for the featured feline slots to be fierce, he said.
Another Vermont working cat, Grant from Bibens Ace Hardware in the New North End of Burlington, was Mr. April in this year’s calendar. (Aubuchon bought the Bibens stores in late 2024 and kept the old name.) A sand-colored tabby with a white nose and a sweet face, Grant posed on the paint counter with a rainbow of color swatches behind him.
Photos of Grant plaster the Burlington store, all around the checkout area and even, sneakily, under boxes of candy near the cash registers. Signage on the front door lets customers know he’s inside and warns them to avoid bringing in dogs, a species Grant strongly dislikes. If a shopper ignores the sign and has a canine companion, Grant usually runs to the back office and doesn’t make a ruckus.
He’s a laid-back cat. One day late last month, he curled up on a low shelf amid the Craftsman tools, wearing a navy-blue bow tie with American flags on it. Seven-year-old Gemma Goglia pointed to the sleeping feline as soon as she entered the store with her mother and brother.
“Oh, there he is!” exclaimed her mom, Lena Cannizzaro. “Good spotting.”
Gemma and her brother, Rocco, 9, sat on the floor to pet Grant, who barely budged. Bubbles stays cool with kids, too, said Chad Herschel, the Vergennes store manager. “He has a very calming, relaxing effect, to be sure,” he said.
That’s a professional requirement for hardware store cats, who encounter all types of chaos. When the Vergennes store underwent a renovation last winter, though, Bubbles went home with his coworker Cassidy to stay safe during the construction.
She also handles all of his vet and grooming appointments. To stay spiffy for the job, Bubbles gets a bath and his nails trimmed at Wag on Inn in Vergennes.
“He has a spa treatment next month,” she said. ➆
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is an occasional series that aims to answer puzzling questions about life in Vermont. Got a head-scratcher we should look into? Send it to
wtf@sevendaysvt.com.
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